With Saudi Arabia announcing plans for a major restructuring of the kingdom’s economy and Iran gearing up to become a regional hegemon, women’s sports is emerging as a benchmark of reform, and one that so far is less than promising.

Saudia Arabia’s recent outline of plans for large scale economic reform away from the kingdom’s dependency on oil acknowledges that women have a role to play but comes nowhere close to assigning them a full-fledged or unrestricted part to play.

… Dr James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, co-director of the University of Wurzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, and the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer blog and a just published book with the same title.